Scammer steals $500,000 worth of Bored Ape NFTs with simple watermark trick

A SCAMMER made off with more than half a million dollars in NFTs after photoshopping a verification check onto knock-offs.

The con artist used a flaw in the trading platforms user interface to make their score.

Bored Ape NFTs are frequently sold for more than five-digit sums

Bored Ape NFTs are made with an eye-catching styleReuters

The Bored Ape Yacht Club is a line of non-fungible tokens with an extremely hot market.

In principle, they’re all the same – it’s a monkey with sloping, tired eyes centered on a colored background.

But they’ve taken hold in the NFT community, being marked up with sunglasses, prints and trippy designs.

Celebrities like Steph Curry, Justin Bieber and Paris Hilton have gotten in on the action, making Bored Apes a luxury digital commodity.

One Bored Ape NFT owner was conned into turning over two assets worth a combined $567,000.

The victim in this scam, known online as s27, posted two NFTs to the trading platform SwapKiwi and executed a sale – unfortunately, it left them holding nothing more valuable than a PDF.

One eagle-eyed Twitter user and NFT discord host, @0xQuit, found that s27 was tricked by a falsified watermark.

On SwapKiwi, verified NFTs are signaled by a green checkmark posted within the frame of the image.

“The scammer added these checkmarks to knock-off NFTs exclusively to make them appear legitimate on SwapKiwi,” @0xQuit wrote in a Twitter thread unpacking the heist.

It’s a fatal flaw in SwapKiwi’s user interface – had the verification checkmark been placed outside the image, this cheeky watermark scam might not have worked.

SwapKiwi tweeted that the business trying to get in contact with s27 to find recourse.

@0xQuit stamped their thread writing “Keep your guard up, always. This space is relentless; only you can protect yourself.”

Bored Ape NFTs are like digital Pokemon cards – the most sought ones can fetch hundreds of thousands on the open market.

And like any other market, there are knock-offs and con artists looking for someone to exploit.